Population Density
Automatically places new players where they can find wood, animals, ore, and space to build. Also priority-based login queue, reserved slots for admins, idle boot ONLY when nearly full, entity thinning for lag reduction, and optional limited teleportation. Never again will your players experience a marathon run, spawn room full of portals, or maze of abandoned builds. This is a zero maintenance solution for administrators, and players don't need to learn any commands!
"This is THE plugin for large servers." – Mumblerit of muttsworldmine.com
Looking for a 1.12.2 or earlier-compatible version? Check here.
Got a question, suggestion, or problem? Post it on the issue tracker.
This video explains the region post system to new players.
See below for information on administrative features.
Feature Summary
- Assigns starting points for new players so that they can ALWAYS find space to build and beginner resources nearby. Players may be spawned directly there, or you can tell them about a slash command which will take them there.
- Respawns animals, regrows grass, and replants trees in the new player area to guarantee important new player resources.
- Removes idle players ONLY when the server is nearly full.
- Login queue to ensure fairness when your server is full, can prioritize some players over others if you like.
- Reserved slots for administrators.
- Optional teleportation posts which help players socialize and trade, but aren't abuse-able to escape combat or save a lost or hungry player.
- "Thins" extremely-dense crowds of monsters and animals, preventing ridiculous levels of farming or monster grinding from lagging your server.
Overview
Server owners often underestimate the badness in starting a player in a crowded area. Sure seeing builds makes your server look legitimate, but having to explore a long time just to find space to build and beginner resources is a major turn off for players who want to start playing right away. Even when players do find a place to start playing, they're often alone because other new players wandered into different areas.
PopulationDensity is the low-maintenance, easy-for-players answer to all these problems.
It works by automatically locating a region with lots of wood and ore, and then dropping new players in that region until they collect most of the easily accessible ore, cut down most of the trees, or crowd it with builds. Then PopulationDensity finds a new resource-wealthy region for future newbies and starts dropping new players there. If you have a great spawn area built up, you can instead spawn players there, and later tell them to use /HomeRegion when they're ready to start adventuring (or another command you define in commands.yml).
Additionally, optional teleportation commands help players move around quickly to admire builds and socialize while not compromising the game's integrity - players can only teleport from automatically-placed teleportation posts, so teleportation can't be used as an "easy-out" for players who mine or adventure themselves into trouble. That way, players keep the challenge of single player without the "players are too far apart" multiplayer issue.
Finally, if you have a "my server is always full" problem, then congratulations on your successful server! :) With PopulationDensity, you may optionally boot players who are idling so more players can log in and have fun, increasing your feel-good factor (or fattening your wallet, for some). when the server IS full, a login queue guarantees fairness, and administrative slots are set aside to guarantee administrators can always get in.
You can also assign players a queue priority to help them get on the server faster during peak times, to reward them for contributing to the server monetarily or through your community.
Requirements
- v6.0 and higher require Java 21
Setup, Configuration, and Commands documentation
Metrics: Like most other plugins this plugin collects anonymous metrics to see who's actually using this plugin, and this information is used to determine popularity as well as what features matter or not in the grand scheme of things.
Sponsors:

Got a question, suggestion, or problem? Post it on the issue tracker.

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Posted Apr 28, 2012The plugin is working great, but I get one error all the time even though the plugin is working: [INFO] PopDensity: Could not find a world named "world". Please update your config.yml
I added "world" to the config.yml and it is spelled correctly, I have no worlds other than the default one (of coure I have world_nether and world_the_end) so I don't see why it's not working
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Posted Apr 27, 2012Hey again BigScary.
I just tried out this plugin today and I like it ALOT. Helps give my players places to build and I especially like how it names areas/regions which takes that job out of my hands. Of course it works well with GP. Are the signs/waypoint pillar things protected? [EDIT: Oh, they are :) sweet]
Is there a reason for players to spawn on TOP of the region's post?
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Posted Apr 26, 2012@bigscary
Want if we have many worlds?
Thanks
- Charles
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Posted Apr 26, 2012@CharlesWCrete
Just put the name of the world you want managed. You have to have the world already created.
@zedadiaswick
I just don't understand why your scan takes so long. I have only a 1GB server and not only is there no lag while the scan runs, the complete result comes back in about 5 seconds. Anyway I'm glad it has improved for you, but it should be much better than it is now, even.
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Posted Apr 25, 2012@bigscary
Thanks for being so patient with me, I've since been able to upgrade the server which seems to have drastically reduced the time it takes to scan. Going from 1.7GB ram, to 3.7GB ram, and to dual CPUs has taken it from 5 ish minutes down to 30 seconds on an empty server. Not tested it when the server is under load, but it's looking good :)
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Posted Apr 25, 2012@CharlesWCrete
In the config you're only selecting which world to use as your managed world, so you'll need to prepare the world outside of the plugin. This is as far as I understand it, Atleast. I've only used it with my single main world as both the managed world and the city world, I assume to have multiple worlds you'd need a plugin like multiverse to manage a second world.
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Posted Apr 24, 2012How do we add a managed world? ex: ManagedWorld: world
Than what do i add?
ManagedWorld: world, creative ? ManagedWorld: world,creative ? ManagedWorld: world creative ?
how?
Thx
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Posted Apr 22, 2012@Zefram
Your welcome!
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Posted Apr 20, 2012@CharlesWCrete
is work Thank you very much
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Posted Apr 20, 2012@Zefram
no!
the perm is - griefprevention.builbreakeverywhere
Not - buildbreakeverywhere
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Posted Apr 19, 2012@bigscary
Ah, right. I'll keep an eye on it, see how it develops.
Great, thanks. And an option to disable the initial scan on plug-in load? Pretty please? :)
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Posted Apr 19, 2012I just mean that I prefer it. As far as I know, VNP still does things the old, complicated, buggy way, while SimplyVanish uses the provided API by Bukkit to do it more simply. True, simplyvanish has a little catching up to do where features are concerned.
I'll add a # of hours between scans config option in the next version.
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Posted Apr 19, 2012@bigscary
Sorry, I wasn't meaning to complain that the scan was causing lag for me. I expect it to. Just looking for a way for me to manage how often or when that lag arises.
Okay, I guess I can appreciate Vanish compatibility not being a requirement for the function of the plug-in. (But er, pretty please?) Had a look at SimplyVanish, doesn't appear as feature complete as VanishNoPacket; were you suggesting it as it's more compatible with PopDensity? Or just as the one you use?
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Posted Apr 19, 2012@mtjaxter
YOU NEED TO CONFIGUR THE PLUGIN!!!
Go to /root/plugins/PopulationDensityData And open up the config.
Then add yout world to Managad Worlds
Thanks!
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Posted Apr 18, 2012@bigscary
as far as lag during scans go, although we have considerable ram and cpu, we have 140+ players on, and scans are a non issue. Generally the Cant keep up! message is way less severe then it sounds. If the server cant keep 20tics/sec it displays that message, but players wont even feel like down to about 13 tics/sec and its playable until approx 5tics/sec. theres also a bukkit.yml setting to disable the message (its pretty damn annoying)
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Posted Apr 18, 2012@mtjaxter
Sorry to hear that. Use 2.7.1 with CB 1.2.5-R1.0. Also you probably got an error message when you booted, which you either missed or ignored. You need to set one configuration variable (managed world).
@Zefram
Go to the admin details page and look up the correct permission. It's generally faster to read the docs than to wait a day for me to respond to you.
@zedadiaswick
Sorry Zedad, you're right, I gave you the wrong number. It's 1GB for 20 player slots, you do the math for your server. There's no published rule of thumb for cpu power, so I can't help you there. Personally, I'm paying for hosted service so I figure I have reasonable ram/cpu, and I've never seen more than 5 seconds of lag, and that only happens once per six hours. If you want better than that, I think you're being unreasonable, considering the massive job of scanning everything in a 400x400x256 block area. (No offense intended.)
No sorry, making you invisible isn't about controlling population density, I think. :) By the way, you should consider switching to SimplyVanish.
@mumblerit
Okay M, I'll think on that. It'll probably get in at some point.
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Posted Apr 17, 2012I add PEX Permissions
- buildbreakanywhere
is not work..
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Posted Apr 17, 2012@zedadiaswick
Server lag, especially that message is more a product of CPU then ram, although ram issues can cause your cpu to do more work..
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Posted Apr 17, 2012@bigscary
500MB seems a little excessive, that would mean I would need 5GB for a 10 player server, and 12.5GB for a 25 player server, 50 players needing 25GB. Still, yes my server is certainly underpowered - it would just help immensely if I had more control over when the scan does and does not initiate. I'm hoping that wouldn't be a massive amount of work to give me such a configuration option.
I estimate at the current rate of progress, we'll need a new region once a week. Ish. So having it run every 6 hours at the moment, and on every start-up, isn't necessary (but I could then change that to run more regularly as the population gets closer to its maximum - or that could be automatic!)
Also, another request! Would it be possible to hook Population Density into the Vanish API? I use VanishNoPacket, and it appears as if players still receive 'zedwick has entered the region' and 'zedwick has left the region' messages when I am vanished. Obviously this gives potential xrayers or griefers some warning that I am still on, vanished and snooping in their area.
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Posted Apr 17, 2012@bigscary
that is true.. i saw this as more of a simple scan on all loaded entity locations, and a culling of npcs/monsters, altho items could fit this as well. It would be more of a seperate scan, you arent really scanning the chunks, you are scanning active entities.